Let’s start with those useless administrators and their fat cat salaries. And of course those teachers that 1) hardly do anything, 2) join those damned unions, and 3) have huge salaries and summers off. Your district already is sharing a superintendent with two or three others? You’re already whole grade and/or teacher sharing? Your class sizes already are bulging at the seams? Keep trimming the fat… We can do better!

Now we’re getting closer to some real efficiency. But let’s don’t stop there! Let’s cut Social Studies. What? You think we want an active, engaged citizenry? NO!!! We want sheep who will passively believe whatever we tell them! And of course we’ll cut science classes. We have extracurricular STEM programs that will make up the difference. Plus we don’t really believe in science anyway…

[Or we could point the accountability arrow the other direction and hold our elected representatives ‘accountable’ for meeting the clear desires of Iowans for a strong education system and a solid future for our state. What will we choose?]

Imagine that your bosses come up to you one day and say something like this…

Hey, I know that we’re a year and a half late on this but we’re trying to take care of you. It looks like the company’s profits are solid but we’re just not sure right now. At this point all we can offer is a 1.25% raise for you and your co-workers. I know that’s below inflation and you’re going to have cut back at home but that’s all we’re comfortable with given our uncertainty about the financial projections. We have to keep this company in the black. We can’t revert back to past years when we operated at a loss, particularly given our new employee compensation system in which a few high fliers get a little extra in their paycheck.

At this point you’re thinking…

Okay, this isn’t great but at least they’re being up front with me. Next year is going to be a really tough year, particularly since I’m already behind given less-than-inflation-rate raises in past years. My peers and I will try to tough it out and hope for better years ahead. [sigh]

Later you hear that the company’s profits are estimated to be 6% this year. You wonder a little bit about where that money is going but your bosses come back to you and say…

Hey, remember that 1.25% raise? We’ve got good news! We know that it’s taken us months to decide but we think we also might be able to squeeze a one-time bonus for you and your fellow employees. It won’t be much but we only have so much money. I know you’re hearing about some profit projections but they’re just estimates, not just actual numbers. Given our need to be fiscally accountable to our stakeholders, we can’t engage in deficit spending.

You’re a little more skeptical this time around but you’re grateful that some additional monies seem to be available. You’re thinking about those college tuition expenses for your kid, the increased gas tax that your state just passed, that old clunker that you’ve been driving around on your barely middle class salary, your ever-growing utility bills…

Not great news but a little better than before. I understand our need to stay out of the red, even though it’s getting harder and harder to take good care of our customers. My co-workers and I will keep on keeping on. Hopefully next year will be more positive. [ugh]

Your bosses come back to you one last time…

Fantastic news! We figured out both the 1.25% raise and the additional one-time bonus for everyone. We greatly appreciate all that you and your colleagues do for us. Your work is SO important to our success and to our customers. All we have to do is run this by the CEO for his approval. Shouldn’t be a problem.

You sit back and wait, fingers and toes crossed, week after week. The bills keep mounting and you’re waiting to decide whether to make some key spending decisions at home for next year. You’ve already been putting them off for months. The longer the CEO takes to decide, the more nervous you get. You’re still hopeful but you can’t make any firm resolutions until you hear for sure.

The 6% profit projections get confirmed so you figure that’s good news, particularly since you know that the company’s rainy day fund also is flush. But then you hear that one of the reasons that there isn’t enough money for you and your fellow employees this year is that your bosses have been giving away huge chunks of the company’s profits to folks who don’t really need it, including other companies and a billionaire businessman who is the richest man in Egypt. And your bosses plan to continue to do so for the next decade with the hope that those folks will keep investing in the company. Now you’re angry but you’re also still a wee bit hopeful…

This stinks. Those funds could have helped me and my family. And my co-workers’ families. And our customers. Instead, we’re being sold a line about fiscal austerity when profits are high. But I really need the money, so I’m not going to make too big a fuss. Hopefully the CEO will come through. [please, oh please, oh please]

Finally, the day arrives. The CEO makes a major announcement moments before everyone heads out for a long vacation weekend. Unfortunately for you and your colleagues, the company is NOT going to pay for the one-time bonuses, leaving you with measly 1.25% raises. Speaking with great conviction, he offers numerous reasons for his decision, including finger-wagging dissatisfaction with your bosses’ budget negotiations, past accounting practices, the company’s investments in other areas, the economic crisis in Greece, and avian flu, even as the profit projections for next year roll in at an additional 6%. Of course the negative impacts of the decision are borne by you, your co-workers, and your customers, not your bosses or the CEO. As you walk away, head in hands and tears of disbelief streaming down your face, you think to yourself…

I hate this. My colleagues and I are going to have to cut back at home yet again, simply because of our company’s unwillingness to invest in us and our customers. They say that they want a world class workplace but they’re not willing to pay for it. No wonder we’re 34th compared to our competitors. I love the people that we serve but I’m underpaid, underappreciated, and the people in charge don’t seem to care one whit. Maybe it’s time to take this job and shove it.

A few folks know that I was one of the three finalists to be the next Director of the Iowa Department of Education. It was an interesting process (e.g., just two 30-minute interviews is apparently all that it takes) but I did feel that I was able to present my best self. I discussed how we won’t see desired changes in student learning outcomes until we change what students experience in their schools on a day-to-day basis. I talked about how investment in deeper learning also is workforce development. I shared some big ideas about where I thought Iowa education could / should go. I highlighted my work with 130+ Iowa schools and other organizations and my strong networks across the state and planet. And so on. Ultimately they decided on the in-house candidate, former Deputy Director Ryan Wise, who is sharp, talented, and knows how both the Department and the politics work. I think Ryan was an excellent choice and wish him all the best in his new role.

One of the obligatory questions in the interview process is What will you do if you disagree with the Governor? After last week’s veto of school funding by Governor Terry Branstad, I’m really happy that I’m not the one who has to stand in front of educators over the next few months and defend that decision. I blogged in March that it was really tough to feel positive about education politics in Iowa this year and I was proven right. The Governor waited until just before the July 4 vacation weekend to make the announcement that 1) he was willing to increase school funding next year at only 1.25%, a rate that comes nowhere near inflation, and 2) he wasn’t willing to sign off on $55+ million in one-time funding that at least would have stemmed some of the losses that schools will face next year. School districts estimate that this fall they will have over 1,000 teaching positions unfilled or terminated across the state as they struggle to pay the bills. Every major newspaper and educational organization has come out in opposition to the underfunding of schools by the legislature and Governor, noting also that our policymakers were a year and a half overdue with their legal obligation to set school funding. Adding potential insult to injury, the Governor’s first press conference after his school funding veto began with a 5-minute shout-out to the tourism industry and a claim that the school start date ‘compromise’ legislation that was opposed by essentially every school district in Iowa was a ‘win-win.’

I think that there are some big questions that we have to ask as a state after the Governor’s school funding veto. Here are a few that currently are on my mind…

1. Budgets reflect policy priorities. How big a priority are our public schools?

Iowa has the top high school graduation rate in the country. We have the third-highest average ACT score of states that test at least half of their graduates. These, personnel sharing arrangements, and other successes are a testament to the efforts of our educators, school systems, and communities to somehow make it all work. But our ability to make do with less makes it easier for Iowa policymakers to continue to starve our schools. At some point the stresses on the system will cause it to break but for now they can continue to push on the edges, knowing that our schools’ eventual failure will occur during someone else’s political cycle. I don’t know what the answer is, particularly since educators in Iowa can’t strike and don’t want to put policy interests above the day-to-day needs of their students. What options do we have besides trying to continue to cover?

4. Are our representatives actually representing our wishes?

One option we all have in our democracy, of course, is voting and participating in the political process. Although social media was a big part of this year’s school funding dialogue, slacktivism can be a fairly easy trap to fall into. Tweets and pins and blog posts and Facebook ‘likes’ are fairly easy to ignore, particularly by policymakers whom are less technology-knowledgeable. We will never know how much pressure to adequately fund schools the Iowa legislators and Governor received from parents, community members, and educators via phone calls, letters, in-person visits, etc. We do know that those requests were unsuccessful.

This year I’ve wondered about the involvement (or lack thereof) of the educators and communities represented by those policymakers who voted against more than minimal school funding. It’s difficult to believe that those families and teachers weren’t concerned about the lack of funds that would be going to their local schools and the impacts on their classrooms and educators. Regardless, their concerns (if any) weren’t powerful enough to dissuade their local representatives from the course that they took.

Battles over school funding will continue. If we like the current path that we’re on, so be it, but if we want different decision-making by those whom we elect to represent us, we must make our voices louder and our votes count. Midwest educators are doubly nice, both because of the culture of where we live and because of our profession. We trust our representatives to represent us and then ever-so-quietly express our concerns when they don’t. We rely on the small handful of statewide organizations to speak for us rather than recognizing that our own individual voices are important (other than Patrick Kearney from Johnston, how many educators were writing regularly and publicly, expressing their concerns in formats longer than 140 characters?). Roark Horn, Executive Director of the School Administrators of Iowa, reminded us this week of the difference between reacting and responding, noting that “it is natural to want to react with the anger and frustration that we feel” as classroom teachers and school leaders. Roark is correct about our tone but I will also note that educators’ current policy advocacy is not working. Politics often requires a bolder voice than we educators are accustomed to exercising. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” At the recent ISTE conference, Pernille Ripp reminded us that we can’t stop fighting for what is right for kids. Will Iowa educators shrug their shoulders and roll over (yet again) or will they do what’s necessary to effectuate the changes that they’d like to see? Maybe it’s time to ask every educator in Iowa to pledge to vote in the next election? Will Iowans hold their representatives accountable next election year for their school funding decisions over the past few years?

5. What behavioral expectations should we have for our representatives?

It was a frustrating year on all sides of the school funding debate. But that doesn’t mean that we get a free pass on how we treat each other, even in the often rough-and-tumble, bare knuckles environment that is politics. Should we expect rooms for public hearings to actually be big enough to hold the public? Should we expect our legislators to actually listen (and maybe respond) to the concerns that we express? Should we expect better than this from our representatives? Or this?Or this?

The Director of the Iowa Department of Education is a political appointee who serves at the discretion of the Governor. But hopefully he or she also is an advocate for children and teachers and schools, not just a puppet or mouthpiece. Hopefully he or she is a fierce proponent of schools getting the resources and autonomy that they need to be successful. So with that in mind, does Ryan Wise agree with the veto? (will Mackenzie Ryan or someone else ask him on record?)

there is no shortcut to improved learning outcomes in a post-2015 world economy where knowledge and skills have become the global currency, the key to better jobs and better lives. And there is no central bank that prints this currency. We cannot inherit this currency, and we cannot produce it through speculation; we can only develop it through sustained effort and investment in people.